a novel use for the obsolete head clamp in the studio
Toronto. In the days of pathetically slow emulsions, devices like the head clamp were used in studios to ensure the subject remained motionless for the time needed to get a decent exposure. Once emulsion speeds reached the sub-second levels these torture devices were no longer needed.
What to do with them? Junk them? Re-purpose them? This photo in Bob Wilson’s Image of the Month column in issue 17-4 suggests one use – as a novel stand. Bob’s column begins, “Use of the head clamp in the studio was the subject of an earlier Image of the Month (Photographic Canadiana, September/October 1990).
“In the early days of photography, it was used to hold the sitter still during the long exposure needed to make a portrait. By the early twentieth century when this image was taken, emulsion speeds were fast enough so that it was no longer needed for normal portraits.
“William Becker in Stratford, Ontario, found the head clamp still useful to hold an object that he wanted to include in the photograph. We could probably never guess why these two men wanted their portrait taken along with this small cloth doll. …”
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